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Tuesday has one second extra!! What will happen to Internet?

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This Tuesday, a single second will be added to clocks around
the world to help counter Earth’s rotation slowing down.

Called a
“leap second,” it has been added approximately every 18 months since 1972 to
rectify ‘lost’ time from the slowing rotation, ensuring that the atomic clock
is in sync with Earth.

Humans can
handle the additional second without even being aware of it, but computers
aren’t quite accustomed to the path of time suddenly changing.

A leap
second was last added to the clock in 2012, during a weekend, which wreaked
havoc online.

It caused
Reddit, Foursquare, Yelp, LinkedIn, Gawker and StumbleUpon to be knocked
offline entirely, as well as hundreds of flights to be delayed in Australia.

Many issues
were caused by a bug in the Network Time Protocol used to keep Linux system
clocks in sync. The flaw caused NTP to lock up some systems entirely, requiring
a reboot before they could recover.

When the
leap second comes around, it means the system clock sees an additional figure,
like so:

2011-12-31
23.59.57

2011-12-31
23.59.58

2011-12-31
23.59.59

2011-12-31
23.59.60 <– leap second

2012-01-01
00.00.00

2012-01-01
00.00.01

2012-01-01
00.00.02

The second
will be inserted into network time services at the exact same moment worldwide,
on June 30th at 23:59:60 UTC.

This time
around it’s critical that businesses are ready, with the leap second being
added during a time when trading on stock markets is open.

Some
businesses are ready for the leap second to be added, like Google and Amazon,
which adjust server clocks gradually over a number of weeks so that it’s not a
sudden change.

Others that
rely on time-critical systems — like stock markets and utilities — are nervous
about it going wrong. A single second of downtime for a stock market means up
to $4.6 million could be lost.

Linux
systems shouldn’t break tomorrow — the bug that affected them last time has
since been resolved, along with other issues found in Java and other operating
systems.

The leap
second is mostly a headache for system administrators who need to ensure their
services are highly available and need to plan how to handle the change.
Hardware providers such as Cisco now provide detailed advice on how their
hardware handles the leap second, but the side effects are unpredictable.

Leap seconds
might not be around for much longer with the International Telecommunications
Union planning to vote on a proposal to eliminate the leap second in November
2015.